Morphing Moonlight: Gender, masks and carnival mayhem- The ...

transgression; it will be shown how the figure of Pierrot and the Moon
maiden can be considered a single, androgynous/hermaphroditic entity. At
first glance, The Pierrot of the Minute seems not to fit the mode of the
Bakhtinian carnivalesque with its bawdy effrontery and mayhem. By making
use of Kristeva’s reading of the poetic carnivalesque as something more
subtle than mere reversal of roles and seeing it as a genuine transgression
(being outside the law, yet containing the law within itself), I shall argue that
the frozen world of Dowson’s play is inherently carnivalesque and
transgressive.
Chapter six will evaluate the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley who was
commissioned to illustrate The Pierrot of the Minute of his contemporary
Ernest Dowson. Beardsley termed this work a ‘filthy little play’, but the
central figure of the play ensured that Beardsley produced five superb
drawings. Pierrot occupied a special place in Beardsley’s work, as he
identified with the figure. This self-identification with Pierrot was a marked
fashion of the fin de siècle and is therefore an aspect of all the artists and
works that I have chosen to examine. It is Beardsley’s Pierrot which
represents the most flamboyant and vivid expression of the carnivalesque,
grotesque tradition and its propensity for gender transgression. In
Beardsley’s work, Pierrot is shown to be of indeterminate gender, neither
androgynous nor hermaphroditic, and therefore possessing close ties with
the grotesque where all forms can potentially be joined to create a world of
constant contradiction, ambivalence and mutability. Here, definitional
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